Is Your Baby Racist?

No, but if it’s born in America, it might grow up retarded.

This is basically the message I am taking away from the recent malarky over Newsweek’s controversial cover story (Sept. 14th.) While Newsweek now seems to be closer to The National Enquirer in terms of content than to a reputable news source, I admit that I did pick up this one. I was on an airport layover in Denver, Colorado, and as I passed a newsstand, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the baby with the deep innocent eyes and the words “IS YOUR BABY RACIST?” stamped across its enormous baby forehead. As I locked eyes with the sweet little thing, and let it draw me across fifteen treacherous feet of crazed travelers, I imagined its little cupid mouth opening to coo at me: “Yeah that’s right. You walk right on over here and pay six dollars fifty for this magazine that you don’t need because your parents get it delivered to their house. You nigger.” What can I say? I fell for it hook, line and sinker (it was the second time in my life I have been called a nigger, but that’s a story for another time.)

Between Denver and San Jose, I read the article. I expected an analysis of the infant brain – an in depth scientific look at the chemistry that makes up racism. Is it a genetic thing? Is there something inside the human brain that makes certain people assholes? I didn’t know. And after reading this article, I still don’t know. What the article told me was basically that kids begin to distinguish groups (racial or otherwise) much earlier on in life than we have been giving them credit for, and that by the time most parents deem it “appropriate” to discuss race with their children, it is too late. It also called for the necessity of specific language when addressing children about race. “We’re all friends” is apparently too vague a message for children to understand that it refers to skin color (and probably especially confusing when the message is being delivered by an enormous yellow bird, an angry green pedophile in a trashcan, and a meth-addicted blue…cookie monster guy.) I don’t know if it’s just the way I feel about the subject – and perhaps I am being naïve here – but I just don’t think it is necessary to talk to children about race. Kids can see that everyone is different. And they usually don’t care. They only begin to care when adults make them feel like they should. Bringing up race to your child, even if your intentions are good, is racist. Children are not born racist: we make them racist. “You look at a baby, and it's so pure and so free and so clean. And adults are, like, this mess of sadness...and... phobias.” So says Mary in Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind. And I agree.

Anyway, invalidating the article wasn’t really what I set out to accomplish here (though let me add as a final spur that after ten pages, the article just…stopped, as though someone forgot to put in the last page. I don’t know if it was just my copy, or if someone at Newsweek had a few too many at lunch, or if they just ran out of room and figured nobody would notice, but something was wrong. And I did notice. And it was fucking weird.) The reason I started writing was because of another Newsweek article I read today, in the Greenest Big Companies in America issue. It was a follow-up to the racist baby article, and it dealt with everybody’s favorite Rush Limbaugh, who accused Newsweek of using the story to speak in code to liberals. According to Rush, “Is Your Baby Racist” actually translates to “Republicans Don’t Support Obama Beccuase They’ve Been Racist Since Birth” (Newsweek, Sept. 28) He went on to whine about the fact that liberals continually label Republicans as racist because they refuse to support Obama, and talk about Maureen Dowd’s comment that Joe Wilson’s outburst at Obama’s healthcare address was actually racist code.

Which brings me to my point: why is everybody in this country so fucking insane? And, yes, by “everybody,” at this particular moment I mean “Rush Limbaugh,” but honestly, let’s stop for a moment and take a look at the bullshit that has gone down recently:

Death Panels/Sarah Palin in general. Yes, it was absolutely ludicrous that anyone with half a brain was swayed at all by her presence in McCain’s campaign. Yes, it is frightening, to say the least, that people can be so easily manipulated. But you know what is worse? The fact that John McCain chose her in the first place! How can a man who believes himself to be in a fit state to run a country have possibly made such a ridiculous decision? Did he talk to her at all before appointing her? (I mean, apart from the part where she asked him if she could suck his dick in exchange for the position and he said, “By all means.”)

Joe Wilson’s tourettes-induced freak out. I mean…come on. How could anybody in their right mind think that yelling “You lie!” at the president during an important speech is a good way to get things done? And even if it was, as some suggest, not a moment of coke-induced derangement, but a coded racist slur (and don’t even get Rush Limbaugh started on that) it doesn’t change the fact that it makes Joe Wilson look crazier than Kanye West in a Crazy Suit, holding a sign that says “I’m with crazy” with an arrow pointing to himself.

The Wii incident, brought to my attention by the marvelously irate Tyler Compton. (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/note.php?note_id=138462866364&ref=mf) Do the people in charge of this country really have nothing inside them except an empty hole for the money to fill, and an intense hatred for everything good? The people at the tops of our major news corporations are so completely and irrevocably blinded by the light reflecting off their Bentleys and shiny bald heads, and so deafened by the sound of billions of dollars worth of loose change floating around in their pockets, that they have finally come to a pinnacle of luncacy in this country: they are being paid to report the news without actually having to report any news. And, as far as anyone can tell, they aren’t going to start reporting any news any time soon.

“Obama is a Nazi.” This goes hand-in-hand with the previous paragraph. Obviously, insurance companies have contracted that fatal disease that has become so common among America’s aristocracy: Crazymoneybrain – a condition in which there is so much money in one’s wallet that it actually starts to seep out, through the back pocket of your trousers (in this case, really expensive, and yet somehow still hideous, slacks) and into the blood stream. Once in the blood stream, the liquid cash goes strait to the brain, where it clogs up nerve endings and blocks synapses, severely interfering with motor-skills and even the most basic levels of human understanding. This is why insurance companies are so unable to grasp the concept that PEOPLE ARE DYING because of their inability to do anything decent and not financially motivated. This is why they fund ridiculous “Obama is Hitler” propaganda-campaigns that get everyone riled up and distracted from the real issue at hand. I suppose it’s really not their fault: they literally have money on the brain, and it makes them technically retarded.

So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go out and buy a helmet. The kind Mike Myers wore in that SNL skit where he’s chained to the climbing frame. I’m going to buy this kind of helmet because I have a theory: that theory is that if I wear something on my head for three years, people will catch on and it will become trendy. It happened with those awesome headphones I have (which they now sell at Urban Outfitters), and it really should catch on with this; considering that everyone in America either is, or is slowly becoming, retarded, and could really use this kind of head protection. I’m going to wear this helmet night and day, in the hopes that the constant pressure on all sides of my cranium will combat the pressure building inside it. In this way, I hope to stop my head from exploding before I have time to go out and buy my AK-47 (I don’t condone guns, but desperate times and all that) and my big-ass boat, and sail into the middle of the Pacific Ocean where I will spend the rest of my life eating Mercury-tainted tuna and twitching. The gun is really just there for show – if I run into any Somalian pirates, I will probably just beg them for sweet release.